Valentine's Day, Nationwide

It's the date date-movies were made for – but your choice could be the difference between heart-make or heartbreak. The safest option, therefore, is an old classic in a new setting, and luckily, there are plenty of those around this year. Like Brief Encounter, as unimpeachably swooning yet hilariously stiff a romance as you could desire. The Secret Cinema team are mounting simultaneous showings of the film in various cities around the country on Tuesday to launch their pop-up Other Cinemainitiative, spearheaded by four 1940s-themed nights at London's Troxy, with usherettes and a live organist (dress code: black tie, with a flower). In a similar vein, dead certainties such as Casablanca and Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet play in Hackney's Round Chapel (Tue to Fri). Or for a cheap date, there's a free outdoor screening of It Happened One Night, outside the National Theatre; snuggle under a blanket and pop inside for pink prosecco and Turkish delight.

For something fresher, various Picturehouse cinemas have sweet-toothed French comedy Hotel Chocolat, with a free chocolate tasting. The BFI Southbank covers all bases with a triple bill of Heartbeats, Picnic At Hanging Rock and To Have And Have Not. Newcastle's Tyneside and Nottingham's Broadway left the programming open to a public vote (they get Once and Amélie respectively), while London's Charlotte Street Hotel has dinner deals with Tom Cruise's Cocktail (Sat) or, for comedy fans, One Day (Sun & Tue). A little more alternative is a live audiovisual evening of Ennio Morricone's psychedelic 1960s grooves. Elsewhere, good luck avoiding the ubiquitous Breakfast At Tiffany's.

The Best Foreign Film Oscar is regularly the least predictable award in the whole show. Looking at the great non-English films that never won, and the unlikely films that have, it feels more like a lucky dip. Perhaps that's the best spirit for approaching this season, gathering 18 of this year's foreign film Oscar submissions. Only two of them were actually nominated: Iran's excellent divorce drama A Separation (the popular favourite, therefore it won't win) and Israel's Jewish scholarship comedy, Footnote. The rest of the films could just as easily have been, from known quantities such as Wim Wenders's Pina and Guide favourite Attenberg to promising surprises like Argentina's florid revenge western Aballay and the realist Swedish 1970s drama Beyond.

As well as surveying gay cinema old and new, this year's festival asked prominent gay figures to pick their favourites. So you get some endorsed by Stephen Fry (Derek Jarman's Sebastiane – a very pre-300 brand of Roman homoeroticism); Holly Johnson (Liz Taylor and Montgomery Clift in Suddenly, Last Summer); and Paul O'Grady (French drama A Love To Hide, in which a gay couple flee Nazi persecution). New stuff includes Kink Crusaders, a visit to Chicago's annual Mr Leather competition; recent releases such as Weekend and The British Guide To Showing Off; and overlooked fare including Latter Days in which a gay party animal tries to seduce a straight Mormon.